Price, Vivian

Vivian Price has been the Assistant Director of Interdisciplinary Studies at California State University Dominguez Hills since 2005. She received her doctorate in Political Science at the University of California, Irvine, in 2000. Chapters of her dissertation on affirmative action and community pressure in construction have been published in Feminist Economics (2002) and in a collection of essays, Women in Construction (Reed Publications, 2004). Her interest is in the humanistic study of gender and work, and has focused on the history and contemporary lives of women in non-traditional jobs, especially in the Building Trades. In 1996, she received a start-up grant and then, additionally, a production grant from the California Council of the Humanities (CCH) to produce Hammering It Out, a documentary on the Century Freeway Women's Employment Program which has since been screened internationally. In 2008, she received another grant from the CCH to direct a series of life-story interviews with tradeswomen; training youths from the Long Beach Lesbian and Gay Center to conduct the interviews and then edit these interviews into short films.

Since the 1990's, Dr. Price has been actively working to facilitate a greater representation of skilled women in the trades. This effort has been facilitated through education networking, training, and her active membership in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the Southern California Tradeswomen Network (SCTN). In 1992 Dr. Price was elected office at the IBEW local 11, and and under the IBEW's jurisdiction, collaborated with Electric Women where she served as secretary throughout the 1990s. She also documented the history and activities of the IBEW for their century anniversary (Our History, Our Future: History of the IBEW 1891-1991), and her role in the inception of WINTER can be traced back to 1994. Along with being a founding member, Dr. Price held a position on the Board of Directors and developed its official newsletter (Non-Trad. News). Moreover, Dr. Price continues to actively pursue grants for training and educational initiatives, provides advisory work, and has collaborated with outreach projects at LAUSD and Long Beach City College, among other institutions. These activities are designed to promote an awareness of gender related discriminatory issues in both the workplace and the educational system. Some of these include proper education and training in sexual harassment prevention and racial discrimination as well as how to monitor relevant laws and propositions. In 2007, Dr. Price initiated the Tradeswomen archives project at the CSUDH Archives and Special Collections Department.

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